My name is Qudir Ayodele but most people call me Q. I am a New York–based painter currently pursuing my MFA in Painting at Pratt Institute. Before pursuing painting full-time, I served in the military and worked as a firefighter— experiences that continue to shape my discipline, endurance, and reverence for ritual in the studio. My work merges classical oil techniques with contemporary self-portraiture. Currently, I reimagine art history as an ongoing dialogue between past and present. Through layered underpaintings, glazing, and chiaroscuro, I transform my studio into a stage where identity, ritual, and time converge. My paintings explore selfhood and memory as living forms of continuity. My ongoing series repositions my body within the lineage of historical painting and contemporary reflection.